Tag Archives: Test cricket

If you can’t win – at least don’t capitulate

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I know we are only half way through Australia’s second innings in Sydney and England have yet to bat again but, let’s face it, a fifth consecutive defeat is the likeliest outcome.  Well, that’s the way it goes in sport.  No matter which team you support you know you can’t win every time.  As the title of this blog should tell you, I’m a cricket lover.  Whilst I would always prefer England to win – I can enjoy good cricket even when we’re on the receiving end.  England’s problem in this series, as in years gone by, is that we haven’t really competed.

Take this Test as an example.  In their first innings, Australia were 97 for 5 – and went on to make 326.  England only just made it past 150 all out.  In their second innings, Australia were 91 for 4 and are currently a little over 200 for 5.  They seem able to dig deep and mount a recovery and we just haven’t been able to.

Australia have always had grit and determination, especially against England.  The Ashes is the longest running contest in international sport and there is no doubt when you see Australia play that it matters to them.  A lot.  It gives me no pleasure to say it, but England just don’t seem to have that same desire.  Take a few Australian wickets cheaply and the next batsmen to come to the crease will play themselves in and then fight back.  If you start to score runs against them then the Australian bowlers will move up a gear and come at you with renewed ferocity.

If England lose a couple of wickets then the next few just fold.  Even more frustrating, even if we do get a few runs on the board, we then have a middle order collapse which wipes out any advantage we initially gained.  If opposing batsmen start to come after our bowlers then they (mostly) become dispirited and lose any fire that they did have.  Stuart Broad has been the notable exception to that on this tour.

All us fans want to see is the England bowlers making it as difficult as they can for Australian batsmen to score and for our batsmen to play as though the Ashes mean something.  Yes, the Ashes have been lost – but it’s better to come home with a 4-1 or even 4-0 loss than a 5-0 whitewash.  Too often on this tour our batsmen have given easy catches on the leg side or in the covers.  Honour is at stake and it means something – to us at least.  Is that really too much to ask?

Why “Sack ‘em and start again” is NOT the answer

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There is no denying that this series in Australia has been dismal watching for England fans.  I have lost far too many nights’ sleep being thoroughly appalled and yet too mesmerised to go to bed, sometimes resorting to port for company and consolation – the more devastating the debacle, the better the vintage required!

As Melbourne made particularly painful watching (the 2004 fully crusted was required by the end) it is tiresomely predictable that calls for sackings and wholesale replacement have been widely spread across the media.  However, knee jerk reactions seldom provide sensible solutions and the break before the Sydney Test, one day longer than planned thanks to England’s early capitulation, should be used for reflection not revenge.

What short memories some pundits seem to have.  England’s transformation from gallant losers to top Test nation (albeit fleetingly) was the result of hard work from coaching staff and players alike.  We should be wary of jettisoning all that hard won experience for youthful future promise because of a single series defeat, no matter how abject it has been.  Do we really believe that the talent we were praising in the summer has evaporated?  Surely not.  Cricket is as much, possibly more, a game of the mind as the body and I suspect that it is the mindset that is the most serious current problem.

Andy Flower was the principal architect of the new world class England team and should be seen as a vital part of recovering it.  Alastair Cook was the obvious successor when Flower’s co-architect Andrew Strauss retired as captain and I don’t see an obvious replacement for him at the moment.

Even before England set out for Australia I was nervous about this series.  It seemed obvious to me that Australia would be hurting from three consecutive Ashes defeats and would be determined to avoid humiliation in front of a home crowd.  I remembered the 2005-06 5-0 whitewash in Australia that followed our victory in England the previous summer.  If that had occurred to me, then it must surely have occurred to an England dressing room full of much better cricketing brains than mine.

Although expecting an Australian fightback I must confess to being surprised by its ferocity.  England have also been left blinking in amazement – perhaps actually as well as metaphorically.  Even then, there have been occasional glimpses of their potential.  Bell’s 72 not out at Adelaide, Cook’s gutsy and determined 72 in Perth (he will have been more frustrated by the mode of his dismissal than any of us) and also his calm and confident 51 in Melbourne.  Perhaps most encouraging of all were Pietersen’s two Melbourne innings of 71 and 49, both of which showed a rarely seen caution and sense of responsibility.  These are senior players who still have something to contribute.  The fact that a debutant, Stokes (surely the real find of the series from an England point of view), is the only centurion thus far should certainly make the senior players ask questions of themselves, but doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be part of the recovery.

It is right that the new MD of English cricket, Paul Downton, should have a frank conversation with Andy Flower about the future.  However, the fact that Flower is, in his own words, “motivated to continue” is music to my ears.  When asked if Cook was still the right man to captain England there was not a moment’s hesitation before Flower’s characteristically blunt reply of “Yes he is.”  He also referred to Cook as having done “excellent things as a leader in the dressing room.”  That’s good enough for me.  At least for now.

Those calling for Cook’s dismissal as captain seem to be yielding to the temptation for a ready soundbite.  Mark Butcher and Geoff Boycott are two examples.  It is interesting that the camp calling for Cook to stay includes more cogent and considered opinions including Scyld Berry, Mark Nicholas, Mike Selvey and Flower himself.  That in itself is telling.

It is always a problem when the most experienced players of a world class team all retire at the same time and the team has to be rebuilt from scratch.  This is the fate that befell Australia in 2006-07 when they simultaneously lost the likes of McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist and Lee.  Why would we inflict a similar vacuum on ourselves voluntarily – and prematurely?

Perhaps no explanation needed after all!

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I was expecting my first post on this cricket blog to be an explanation of my strapline: The frustrating life of an England cricket fan.  However, as I am writing this during the 2013 Ashes Test in Melbourne I don’t think any further explanation is needed.

I have been an England fan for over thirty years and have had to endure humiliation after ritual humiliation.  Friends and colleagues who are either not cricket fans at all or who are supporters of their own home nation are always surprised that England cricket fans can reel off precise details of moments of glory: Graham Gooch’s 333 against India at Lord’s in 1990 (and 123 in the second innings too – I was there); Michael Atherton’s heroic 185 not out at Johannesburg in 1995; ‘Botham’s Ashes’ in 1981, especially his 50 and 149 not out at Headingley (where he also took 6 for 95).  The reason we all know of these feats and can quote them at the drop of a hat is that they have been so few and far between.  They are the occasional beacons in which we can bask amidst the otherwise uninterrupted Stygian gloom.

The grimly repetitive script was of middle order collapses – even when the top order had given us a start that, for any other nation, would have meant that an impressive total was inevitable – and an inability to finish off the tail even when our bowlers had taken the first few wickets relatively cheaply.  Apparently, we just didn’t know how to win.  Indeed, we almost seemed frightened of doing so.

Then, at last, things began to change.  Michael Vaughan’s England stopped the rot and, little by little, England began to climb up the rankings.  Suddenly, us loyal fans approached a test series wondering what the outcome would be, instead of debating by how much we would lose.  After Vaughan’s much lamented retirement, Andrew Strauss took it one stage further and we now seemed more likely to win than lose.  Finally, let my joy be unconfined, England were top of the world rankings.  I had been waiting for this moment for thirty years.  Of course, I never believed this heralded an equal period of three decades of world supremacy, but I did allow myself to hope that we could have four or five years at number one, with perhaps another decade or so somewhere in the top three.

That is why this Ashes tour has been so disappointing and depressing.  It is a return to those dark days that we thought had been banished – at least for a while.  Good starts followed by the most bewildering of collapses – in the day that has just finished the last five wickets were lost in 40 balls for just six, yes SIX, runs.  Mediocre Australian tails that have been allowed to wag for far too long – the 40 put on for the final wicket of the first Australian innings in Melbourne may yet prove to be decisive.

So the frustration seems set to continue.  There are, of course, some positives and I will return to those in a future post but, for now, it is forlornly familiar.  I just hope that the England players – who have the ultimate privilege of representing their country – realise how badly they are letting down their loyal followers and, indeed, the nation as a whole.

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